When I got the wheel, with Moses Shoos forward and my uncle gone asleep below, ’twas near dawn. We were under reasonable sail, running blindly through the night: there were no heroics of carrying-on––my uncle was not the man to bear them. But we were frozen stiff––every block and rope of us. And ’twas then blowing up with angrier intention; and ’twas dark and very cold, I recall––and the air was thick with the dust of snow, so that ’twas hard to breathe. Congealing drops of spray came like bullets: I recall that they hurt me. I recall, too, that I was presently frozen to the deck, and that my mitts were stuck to the wheel––that I became fixed and heavy. The old craft had lost her buoyant will: she labored through the shadowy, ghostly crested seas, in a fashion the most weary and hopeless. I fancied I knew why: I fancied, indeed, that she had come close to her last harbor. And of this I soon made sure: I felt of her, just before the break of day, discovering, but with no selfish perturbation, that she was 318 exhausted. I felt of her tired plunges, of the stagger of her, of her failing strength and will; and I perceived––by way of the wheel in my understanding hands––that she would be glad to abandon this unequal struggle of the eternal youth of the sea against her age and mortality. And the day broke; and with the gray light came the fool of Twist Tickle over the deck. ’Twas a sinister dawn: no land in sight––but a waste of raging sea to view––and the ship laden forward with a shameful burden of ice.
Moses spoke: I did not hear him in the wind, because, I fancy, of the ice in my ear.
“Don’t hear ye!” I shouted.
“She’ve begun t’ leak!” he screamed.
I knew that she had.
“No use callin’ the skipper,” says he. “All froze up. Leave un sleep.”
I nodded.
“Goin’ down,” says he. “Knowed she would.”
My uncle came on deck: he was smiling––most placid, indeed.
“Well, well!” he shouted. “Day, eh?”